If there's one reason we have done better than most of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful.

I think one thing I find very motivating -- and I think this is probably a very common form of motivation or cause of motivation is, I love people counting on me, and so, you know, today it's so easy to be motivated, because we have millions of customers counting on us at Amazon.com. We've got thousands of investors counting on us. And, we're a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That's fun.

I remember, just to show you how stupid I can be -- my only defense is that it was late. We were packing these things, everybody in the company and I had this brainstorm as I said to the person next to me, "This packing is killing me! My back hurts, this is killing my knees on this hard cement floor" and this person said, "Yeah, I know what you mean."

And I said, "You know what we need?" my brilliant insight, "We need knee pads!" I was very serious, and this person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they'd ever seen. I'm working for this person? This is great. "What we need is packing tables."

I looked this person and I thought that was the smartest idea I had ever heard. The next day we got packing tables and I think we doubled our productivity. That early stage, by the way of amazon.com, when we were so unprepared is probably one of the luckiest things that ever happened to us because it formed a culture of customer service in every department of the company.

People who are often right are people who often changed their minds. Consistency of thought is not a particularly positive trait. It's perfectly healthy to have an idea tomorrow that contradicts your idea today.

I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.

If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.